Connectors for signal and/or power transmission refer generally to connecting devices designed for use with electronic signals and/or electric power and to their accessories. Such connectors can be viewed as bridges for all kinds of signals, and their quality affects the stability of signal and/or current transmission and is therefore crucial to the operation of electronic systems. With the advancement of electronic technology, these connectors have become indispensable features of various electronic devices when it comes to data transmission and connection with peripherals. Of the plethora of connector transmission specifications, Universal Serial Bus (USB) is the most widely used.
Currently, the USB specifications are undergoing a comprehensive upgrade to USB 3.1. In addition, “Type-C connectors” were developed to increase the speed of transmission, the types of signals to be transmitted, and the convenience of hot swapping. One major difference of the Type-C connector structure is its “vertically symmetric configuration”, which allows a user to insert a Type-C connector freely and intuitively into a corresponding socket without having to identify the vertical orientation of the connector first. In order for a Type-C connector to be used with either side up, it is necessary that two identical sets of connection terminals be arranged in each such connector, and because of that, a grounding plate must be provided in the connector to separate, and thereby prevent signal interference between, the two sets of terminals.
Given the ongoing trend of electronic device design toward “increasing compactness”, however, the aforesaid requirements of USB 3.1 Type-C connectors pose new challenges to manufacture and assembly. More specifically, once the connector structure is downsized, the distance between terminals is bound to shorten, which hinders the grounding plate from shielding the two sets of terminals completely from each other. The issue to be addressed by the present invention is to further improve the conventional connector structure.